Types of transcription

A transcription which is a visual system of notation of the sound structure of speech. The transcription should provide each phoneme with a distinctive symbol to avoid ambiguity. It is called phonemic transcription, or broad. It contains as many symbols as there are phonemes in the language. /t/

If it is exactness in the differentiation of the allophones of each phoneme that is required, the transcription chould provide either different symbols for each allophone, or introduce special marks to represent the different features of the allophones. Phonetic transcription [t] is used to denote the different features the allophones are characterized by.

One of the principles of this transcription is to use the fewest possible symbols of the simplest possible shape.

11. The structure and functions of syllables in English

Syllable formation in English is based on the phonological opposition vowel - consonant. Vowels are usually syllabic while consonants are not with the exceptions of [l], [m], [n], which become syllabic in a final position preceded by a

noise consonant: bottle [bσtl], bottom [bσtm], button [b/\tn] and [r] (in those accents which pronounce [r]) perhaps [præps].

The structure of English syllables can be summarized as follows:

• Many syllables have one or more consonants preceding the nucleus. These make upthe syllable onset: me, so, plow.

• Many syllables have one or more consonants, following the nucleus. They make up the syllable coda. They are traditionally known as closed syllables: cat, jump.

• The combination of nucleus and coda has a special significance, making up the rhyming property of a syllable.

The English language has developed the closed type of syllable as the fundamental one while in Russian it is the open type that forms the basis of syllable formation.

The other aspect of this component is syllable division. The problem of syllable division in case of intervocalic consonants and their clusters, like in such words as city, extra, standing and others.

Let us consider the first word ['sit.i]. There exist two possibilities:

a) the point of syllable division is after the intervocalic consonant:

b) the point of syllable division is inside the consonant.

In both cases the first syllable remains closed because the shot vowel should remains check The result of instrumentally analyses show, that the point of syllable division in such words is inside the intervocalic consonant. EPD indicates the point of division after the consonant.

The second case. There are two syllables in the word extra but where should the boundary between them fall?

1) [e - kstrə]. It is unlike that people would opt for a division between [e] and [kstrə] because there are no syllables in English which begin with consonant sequence [kstr].

2) Similarly, a division between [ekstr] and [ə] would be unnatural.

3) [ek - strə], [eks - trə], [ekst - rə] are possible. People usually prefer either of the first two options here, but there no obvious way of deciding between them.

In some cases we may take into account the morphemic structure of words. For example, standing consists of two syllables; on phonetic grounds [stæn - diŋ). on grammatical grounds [stænd - iŋ].

Now we shall consider two functions of the syllable.

The first is constitutive function. It lies in its ability to be a part of a word itself. The syllables form language units of greater magnitude that is words, morphemes, and utterances. It this respect two things should be emphasized. First, the syllable is the unit within which the relations between distinctive features ofphonemes and their acoustic correlates are revealed. Second, within a syllable (or syllables) prosodic characteristics of speech are realized, which form the stress pattern of a word and the intonation structure of an utterance. In sum, the syllable is a specific minimal structure of both segmental and suprasegmental features.

The other function is distinctive one. In this respect the syllable is characterized by its ability to differentiate words and word-forms. One minimal pare has been found in English to illustrate the word distinctive function in the syllabic: nitrate — night-rate. There analogical distinction between word combinations can be illustrated by many more examples: an aim - a name; an ice house - a nice house, etc. Sometimes the difference in syllable division may be the basic ground for differentiation in such pairs as I saw her rise.- I saw her eyes; I saw the meat — I saw them eat.

12. Theories on syllable formation and division

Speech can be broken into minimal pronounceable units into which sounds show a tendency to cluster or group. These smallest phonetic groups arc generally given the name of syllables. Being the smallest pronounceable units, syllables form morphemes, words and phrases. Each of these units is characterized by a certain syllabic structure. Thus a meaningful language unit phonetically may be considered from the point of view of syllable formation and syllable division.

The syllable is a complicated phenomenon and like a phoneme it can be studied on four levels - articulatory, acoustic, auditory andfunctional. The complexity of the phenomenon gave rise to many theories.

We could start with the so-called expiratory (chest pulse or pressure) theory by R.H. Stetson. This theory is based on the assumption that expiration in speech is a pulsating process and each syllable should correspond to a single expiration. So the number of syllables in an utterance is determined by the number of expirations made in the production of the utterance. This theory was strongly criticized by Russian and foreign linguists. G.P. Torsuyev, for example, wrote that in a phrase a number of words and consequently a number of syllables can be pronounced with a single expiration. This fact makes the validity of the theory doubtful.

Another theory of syllable put forward by O. Jespersen is generally called the sonority theory. According to O. Jespersen, each sound is characterized by a certain degree of sonority which is understood us acoustic property of a sound that determines its perceptibility. According to this sound property a ranking of speech sounds could be established: <the least sonorous> voiceless plosives à voiced fricatives àvoiced plosives à voiced fricatives à sonorants à close vowels àopen vowels <the most sonorous>. In the word plant for example we may use the following wave of sonority: [pla:nt]. According to V.A. Vasssilyev the most serious drawback of this theory is that it fails to explain the actual mechanism of syllable formation and syllable division. Besides, the concept of sonority is not very clearly defined.

Further experimental work aimed to description of the syllable resulted in lot of other theories. However the question of articulatory mechanism of syllable in a still an open question in phonetics. We might suppose that this mechanism is similar in all languages and could be regarded as phonetic universal.

In Russian linguistics there has been adopted the theory of syllable by LV Shcherba. It is called the theory of muscular tension. In most languages there is the syllabic phoneme in the centre of the syllable which is usually a vowel phoneme or, in some languages, a sonorant. The phonemes preceding or following the syllabic peak are called marginal. The tense of articulation increases within the range of prevocalic consonants and then decreases within the range of postvocalic consonants.

Russian linguist and psychologist N.I. Zhinkin has suggested the so-called loudness theory which seems to combine both production and perception levels. The experiments carried out by N.I. Zhinkin showed that the arc of loudness of perception level is formed due to variations of the volume pharyngeal passage which is modified by contractions of its walls. The narrowing of the passage and the increase in muscular tension which results from it reinforce the actual loudness of a vowel thus forming the peak of the syllabic. So the syllable is the arc оf loudness which correlates with the arc of articulatory effort on the speed production level since variations in loudness are due to the work of all speech mechanisms.

It is perfectly obvious that no phonetician has succeeded so far in giving an adequate explanation of what the syllable is. The difficulties seem to arise from the various possibilities of approach to the unit. There exist two points of view:

1. Sоme linguists consider the syllable to be a purely articulatory unit which lacks any functional value. This point of view is defended on the ground that the boundaries of syllables do not always coincide with those of morphemes.

2. However the majority of linguists treat the syllable as the smallest pronounceable unit which can reveal some linguistic function.

Trying to define the syllable from articulatory point of view we may talk about universals. When we mean the functional aspect of the syllable it should be defined with the reference to the structure of one particular language.

The definition of the syllable from the functional point of view tends to single out the following features of the syllable:

a) a syllable is a chain of phonemes of varying length;

b) a syllable is constructed on the basis of contrast of its constituents (which is usually of vowel - consonant type);

c) the nucleus of a syllable is a vowel, the presence of consonants is optional; there are no languages in which vowels are not used as syllable nuclei, however, there are languages in which this function is performed by consonants;

d) the distribution of phonemes in the syllabic structure follows by the rules which are specific enough for a particular language.

There are different points of view on syllable formation which are briefly the following:

1. The most ancient theory states that there are as many syllables in a word as there are vowels. This theory is primitive and insuffi­cient since it does not take into consideration consonants which also can
form syllables in some languages, neither does it explain the boundary of syllables.

2. The expiratory theory (chest -pulse theory) states that there are as many syllables in a word as there are expiration pulses. The borderline between the syllab­les is, according to this theory, the moment of the weakest expiration. This theory is inconsistent because it is quite possible to pronounce several syllables in one articulatory effort or expiration.

3. The sonority theory states that there are as many syllables in a word as there are peaks of prominence according to the scale of sono­rity. Thus, in the word sudden the most sonorous is the vowel / ʌ /, then goes the nasal sonorant /n/ which forms the second peak of prominence, /s/ and /d/ are sounds of low sonority, they cannot be consider» as syllable forming sounds. The sonority theory helps to establish the number of syllables in a word, but fails to explain the mechanism of syllable division because it does not state to which syllable the weak sound at the boundary of two syllables belongs.

4. The "arc of loudness" or "arc of articulatory tension" theory is based on L.V. Shcherba's statement that the centre of a syllable is the syllable forming phoneme. Sounds which precede or follow it constitute a chain or an arc which is weak in the beginning and in the end and strong in the middle.

If a syllable consists of one vowel, then its strength increases in the beginning, reaches the maximum of loudness and then, gradually decreases. In terms of the "arc of loudness" theory there are as many syllables in a word as there are "arcs of loudness". A syllable begins at the point where a new articulatory effort starts, and the end of the syllable is the point where the articulatory effort drops to the minimum.

So, a syllable can be defined as a phonetic unit, which is pronounced by one articulatory effort, by one muscular contraction, which results auditorily in one uninterrupted arc of loudness.

13. RP AS THE STANDARD ENGLISH ACCENT.

English has always had its regional pronunciations. Yet as early as the 16 century, one regional accent began to acquire social prestige. For reasong of politics, commerce, and the presence of the Court, it was the pronunciation of the south-east of England, and more particulary, that of the London region, that the prestige was attached. The early phonetician John Hart notes (1569) that it is in the Court and London that ‘the flower of the English toungue is used’. Already in those times pronunciatioin was a marker of position in society: those eager for social advancement felt obliged to modify their accent in the direction of the social standard. With times RP has come to symbolize a person's high position in society. During the 19th century, it became the accent of public schools, such as Eton and Harrow, and was soon the main sign that a speaker had received a good education. It spread rapidly throughout the Civil Service of the British Empire and the armed forces, and became the voice of authority and power. Because it was a regionally 'neutral' accent, and was thought to be more widely understood than any regional accent, it came to adopted by the BBC, when radio broadcasting began in the 1920s. During WW2, it became linked in many minds with the voice of freedom, and the notion of a "BBC pronunciation" grew. Today, with the breakdown of rigid divisions between social classes and the development of the mass media, RP has altered much over just a few decades. Less than 3 per cent of the British people speak it in a pure form now.

It is associated with the south-east, where most RP-speakers live or work, but it can be found anywhere in the country. Accents usually tell us where a person is from; RP tells us only about a person's social or educational background. RP is a special accent - a regionally neutral accent that is used as a standard for broadcasting and some other kinds of public speaking. RP is widely used is the academic world, both in Britain and globally. Along with General American., it is the most common model accent in teaching English as a foreign lanugage. Many Britons abroad modify their accent to make their pronunciation closer to RP in order to be better understood than if they were using their usual accent.

There are many people in England who do not speak RP though their English in good and correct. They speak Standard Englsih with a regional type of pronunciation. Phoneticians usually divide English speakers into three groups: 1. RP speakers of standard Engslih (those who speak Standard English without any local accent). 2. Non-RP speakers of Standard Englsh (those who speak E with a regional accent). 3. Dialectal speakers Within RP itself three main types are distinguished: 1. The conservative RP, the general RP form, which is heard on the BBC, and the trend-setting, or advanced RP form, associated with certain social and professional groups.

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